Quilts of America

Yesterday I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the exhibition “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts.

Quilts are awesome.

Some are scary, like this one.

This one too. It’s also abstract/minimalist.

Some are accidentally abstract.

This one has a horse on it

They have funny details like threaded squiggles.

And balloon things with lines coming out of them?

Nicole said the stains are probably period blood…

A patriotic eagle with flowery wings and surrounded by flowers. An especially beautiful quilt.

This one is called a “basket quilt.”

In the center of all these quilts was a strange dark room called The Dinner Party by artist Judy Chicago.

This is how I imagined spaceship bridges to appear in the Isaac Asimov book I read in 7th grade.

The other side of it is cool too. It’s like fancy table settings for important women in feminist history.

Emily Dickinson is lacy.

Here’s Virginia Woolf.

This one with the pelt is called Primordial Goddess. They look a bit like vaginas, huh.

If you live in or around the New York Metropolitan Area, or plan to visit, I highly recommend seeing this stuff in person. Photographs do the fabric’s depth and aura little justice. Quilts are on display until September 15. The Dinner Party is there indefinitely.

Also there’s a lot of other stuff at the museum. If you look hard enough you can find this ibis sarcophagus: